


The Floor is Lava

by fivefootnothing



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-18
Updated: 2009-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-02 21:44:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fivefootnothing/pseuds/fivefootnothing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn't a game of Pretend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Floor is Lava

"The floor," the Doctor declared, voice heavy and trembling with authority. "Is lava."

Tegan and Nyssa exchanged worried glances. For all the Doctor's odd little quirks, and there were dozens, climbing up on kitchen countertops wasn't ordinarily one of them. They both endeavored to push through the open doorway, to cross into the kitchen.

But the Doctor nipped their progress in the bud with a shrill, near-ear piercing "STOP!" His arms flailed out, his palms faced outwards, and something was flung down to the spotless floor. That something rolled across the ground (which had, in fact, _not_ transformed into lava), halting right at the edge of Tegan's shoe.

She picked it up. A small light metallic can, empty.

"Ginger beer," Tegan said ruefully, as if it explained everything.

And it did.

"But we'd locked all those 'fizzy drinks' away, hidden them," Nyssa insisted. "He simply couldn't have figured out how to--"

A crash interrupted her, sent them both to aiming their attention on the Doctor again. He'd maneuvered himself from countertop to table after a brilliant and mad leap, causing pots and silverware to tumble to the still-not-lava floor.

"Doctor?" said Tegan.

"I'll be there in a moment!" he answered, one foot hovering in mid-air as he tried to judge how great of a jump he required to edge past the table and land on that chair a few feet away.

"Doctor, be reasonable," Nyssa said, deciding that she ought to appeal to the Doctor's logical thought processes, even if they'd been muddled by drink. "How could the TARDIS floor suddenly transform into lava? The life support systems wouldn't allow for it."

"Life support systems can be over-ridden by a variety of...of...of...problems," said the Doctor, a frown darkening his features as if suddenly realizing his mouth was finding it impossible to keep up with the speed of his thoughts. "A faulty piece of wiring. A stray ionic storm. And the TARDIS always did have a mind of her own!"

"But Doctor..."

"It. Is. Lava," he insisted, the way a child insisted he'd just seen a ghost or a fairy or a flying pig.

"Alright. It's lava," Tegan said gently while she shot Nyssa another worried look. "He'll hurt himself if he carries on like this," she added lowly.

Tegan's sudden agreement, out of character though it was, seemed to placate the Doctor somewhat, and with a smug look of satisfaction he made for the next safe spot, vaulting past the table's edge and coming down hard on the wooden chair. He balanced precariously on the seat, one leg planted on the cushion, the other dangling towards Nyssa and Tegan. "Nearly there!" he said.

"Good," Nyssa said, in a tone one would normally use for coaxing a child to take its very first steps across a room. "Now, give us your hands so we can help."

The Doctor clasped onto their wrists firmly, and then jumped from the chair to the floor just past the hallway, with Nyssa and Tegan stumbling backwards as they took the brunt of his momentum.

"Thank you!" said the Doctor brightly, a bit too brightly for the normally staid Time Lord. The effects of carbonated beverages on Gallifreyan physiology varied from individual to individual, and from incarnation to incarnation, but the Doctor's fifth self seemed especially vulnerable to fizzy drinks for some odd reason. "Now we must...I insist..._must_ make our way to the console room and right this malfunction before the entire TARDIS interior is engulfed with magma! And that wouldn't do at all. For one thing, it would be unbearably hot. Think of what'll happen to the Lake Room!" He dashed off in the wrong direction, swiveled at the end of the corridor, and then scurried the path back to the console room.

Nyssa had already gone to follow, but Tegan couldn't help a final glance back at the kitchen and at the mess she and Nyssa would invariably have to clean up. "Every day, an adventure," she chuckled to herself. "Even if it's sometimes only in the Doctor's own head."

A crackling, popping, hissing noise came from one corner of the kitchen, and Tegan looked inside, awestruck. The table in the center of the room, the one the Doctor had so recently stood upon, was sinking into the floor. That patch of ground beneath, wherever the table's shadow touched, glowed a white-hot and steaming orange.

The floor was lava.

Tegan backed away and sped after the Doctor and Nyssa, hoping to reach them in time to tell them that the Doctor's discovery, his insistence, was God's honest truth.


End file.
